Full Speed Ahead

If journey times really are going to be cut by so little, then why not re-open all those lovely little railway stations in lovely little country towns, and have the trains stop at them, even if only at certain times of the day?

Still, today is a great day for those who cherish the traditional British rural environment, for which railways were invented but which nothing has damaged more than the colossally expensive expansion of the road network, and for those who believe in harnessing the power of the State in the service of economic, social and cultural goods, including business. Or, as we are otherwise known, conservatives. Historically, Tories. Including the Tories who were crucial to the foundation and development of the Labour Movement.

As it took shape, Labour adapted itself both to Radical Liberalism and to populist Toryism, depending on the pre-existing culture at least of its target electorate. Labour was never the party of anything like the whole of the working classes, nor did those classes ever provide anything like all of its support. Britain has neither a proletariat nor a bourgeoisie in the Marxist or Continental sense, but several working classes and several middle classes. There was never any incongruity about the presence of middle or upper-class people in the Labour Party, and not least among Labour MPs. Nor about their having come from, and far from cast off, either Liberal or Tory backgrounds. Especially in Labour’s early years, those backgrounds routinely included activism, and indeed parliamentary service, on behalf of either of those parties.

Both Radical Liberalism and populist Toryism were very open to central and local government action in the service of their communities. They were therefore open to many aspects of the never-dominant Socialist strand in Labour as surely as they acted as checks and balances on that tendency. Deeply rooted in the chapels, the Radicals had a pronounced streak of moral and social conservatism, especially where intoxication and gambling were concerned. Toryism, properly so called, upholds the organic Constitution, believes in carefully controlled importation and immigration, and advocates a realist foreign policy which includes a strong defence capability used only most sparingly and to strictly defensive ends. And so on. The movement that drank deeply from both of these wells did in fact deliver social democracy in this country, a good both in itself and in its prevention of a Communist revolution.

Did I say that business was an economic, social and cultural good properly served by State action? Oh, yes, indeed. There is no private sector, at least not as that term is ordinarily employed. Not in any advanced country, and not since the War at the latest. Take out bailouts or the permanent promise of them, take out central and local government contracts, take out planning deals and other sweeteners, and take out the guarantee of customer bases by means of public sector pay and the benefits system, and what is there left? They are all as dependent on public money as any teacher, nurse or road sweeper. Everyone is.

And with public money come public responsibilities, including public accountability for how those responsibilities are or are not being met, accountability and responsibilities defined by classical, historic, mainstream Christianity as the basis of the British State and as the guiding inspiration of all three of this State’s authentic, indigenous, popular political traditions.

Privatisation, globalisation, deregulation and demutualisation have turned out, in the most spectacular fashion, to have been anything but fiscally responsible. The same is true of a generation of scorn for full employment, leading to the massively increased benefit dependency of the 1980s and the institutionalisation of that mass indolence down to the present day.

The transfer of huge sums of public money to ostensibly private, but entirely risk-free, companies in order to run schools, hospitals, railways, rubbish collections, and so many other things: is that fiscally responsible? Bailing out the City at all, never mind so that it can carry on paying the same salaries and bonuses as before: is that fiscally responsible? Even leaving aside more rarefied academic pursuits, is it fiscally responsible to allow primary education, or healthcare, or public transport, or social housing to fall apart? Is that good for business?

Are wars of aggression fiscally responsible? Are military-industrial complexes? Is it fiscally responsible to allow the private health insurance companies to charge the American taxpayer whatever they like, because the absence of a public option or a single-payer system was the price of the votes of Blue Dog Democrats who still voted against the Bill anyway and of wavering Republicans who turned out not to exist at all?

Not by coincidence have those who have insisted on a Healthcare Bill without the public option also insisted on a Healthcare Bill with less protection for the child in the womb. In the same spirit did Margaret Thatcher give Britain abortion up to birth, entirely of a piece with the rest of her legacy, which is of unconservative irresponsibility, fiscal as much as every other kind.

Far from our having grown richer since 1979, we have in fact grown vastly poorer: only a generation ago, a single manual wage provided the wage-earner, his wife and their several children with a quality of life unimaginable even on two professional salaries today. This impoverishment has been so rapid and so extreme that most people, including almost all politicians and commentators, simply refuse to acknowledge that it has happened. But it has indeed happened. And it is still going on.

But it has suffered a blow today. Let that blow be the first of many.